Monday, February 20, 2012

Shauna Evans Shares Her Experience on Four Weddings

On February 17, 2012, TLC aired an episode of Four Weddings that
featured four women with very different visions for their weddings. From
traditional gowns to a daring dress and high-budget affairs to brides
on a budget, this episode of Four Weddings is definitely one that all
wedding fanatics should take the time to watch.

The show
brought us Shauna, whose wedding featured men in kilts, Juli, whose
wedding had a fall theme, Ashanti, a sweet, kind hearted person, and
Tarisha, a wild child in a red wedding dress.

Less Than Reality
caught up with Shauna Moroney Evans to learn what she has to say about
her nuptials, her experience on Four Weddings, and her advice for anyone
who wants to be on the show.

1. Do you think your wedding and the other girls’ weddings were
accurately depicted on Four Weddings? Is there anything you wish the
show featured but didn’t show, or anything they showed us that you wish
they’d skipped?

There are so many things that were left out
of all of our weddings, to be truthful. You know going into the edit
that a lot will get cut since they have to take 5 or more hours of wedding down
to about 7 minutes. Some things that were left out were for the best;
for example, one bride (I won’t say who) was 1 ½ hours late to her ceremony.
We were all very upset for her because we knew that it was out of her
control, but our director made us comment on the fact that she was late a
lot. For her sake, I was glad that this was left out of the show. She certainly
didn’t want to have to relive that!

However, we all had really cool bits at our weddings that didn’t make it in. First of all, the show made a big fuss over Juli’s dessert room.
However, Tarisha had a candy bar, I had a HUGE Viennese hour (my entire
cocktail hour space was filled with desserts), and Ashanti hired a
cupcake truck called The Cupcake Stop to give out cupcakes after her
wedding. No one’s cocktail hour was focused on, other than Juli’s (and
that was mostly to say that there wasn’t enough seating), and everyone
knows that cocktail hour is where the best food is! (Honestly, who’s
still all that hungry by the time the entrees come out?) I was glad
that our Lovespoon favors were shown, but it wasn’t mentioned that Jon
(my husband) brewed a special beer, a Chocolate Raspberry Stout, of which guests could take home bottles, and, due to the size of the Viennese
hour, we boxed our wedding cake so guests could take that with them, as
well.

Also, I was really upset that the show said our guests only had
two choices for their entrée! We had four – there was fish (which was
actually my favorite) and vegetarian lasagna as well as
chicken and steak. The choice of entrées was one of the main reasons
that we picked our venue. The fact that we had a drummer and a
saxophone player to accompany our DJ was toned down, as well, even
though Juli’s drummer was featured prominently in the Four Weddings episode.

Basically, since
we knew that Juli had won, a chunk of the show was biased towards the
better parts of her wedding. Don’t get me wrong – her wedding was
awesome, and I pretty much knew that she was going to win, but the
editing made the competition appear a little more one sided than it
actually was.

There was one thing that I truly wish the audience could have seen -
our wedding bands! They only showed us looking at Juli's, but we each
admired everyone's. I really wanted them to show ours, because we had
them custom made by a Celtic jeweler, R.E. Piland, based on a design that
Jon drew. They have a shamrock and a dragon on them to stand for
Ireland and Wales. They're gorgeous, and they're something unique that
we're really excited about, yet they got left out entirely!

2. What were your favorite moments from your
episode of Four Weddings? I loved hearing the other girls say that the
men in kilts at your wedding were sexy, and laughed when one of the
girls noted her concern about Tarisha’s upper body staying covered.

Despite a lot of things being left out, I was pretty happy with the way
the episode looked in the end. I was really glad that none of the girls
said anything too negative about anyone. I LOVED Tarisha saying that
kilts are sexy and that “bagpipes would have been dope.” Her attempt at
English and Welsh accents was also hilarious! Juli also had me
laughing when she said she was “tired of hora-ing,” but it came out
sounding like something completely different and not as decent! I
giggled when there was footage of me noting all the “babymaking talk”
during Ashanti’s ceremony. I also loved the footage of the crazy guy
dancing with us at Juli’s wedding. That was actually her groom’s
brother, who had just turned 21. He was nuts, a lot of over-the-top
fun. And who wouldn’t love having your awesome Star Wars themed
entrance into your wedding being the opening shot of the episode? That
was fun.

3. Now that you’ve seen how the other girls scored
each of the weddings, do you agree with the scores? Do you think Juli
deserved to win?

At the first wedding we went to, our director told
us that we should think of the scores as grades – a 7 would be like a
70, a C, an 8 like a B, a 9 like an A. I really took that to heart with
my scores. It prevented me from giving anyone a 6, because that would
mean that they had a failing wedding. The bride who’s wedding came
first (the weddings were not shown in the order that they occurred) did
not get that speech, so I don’t know if her ratings were lowered
slightly because of that. So with that in mind, I thought the scores for my
wedding were a little bit low. It was like getting two Cs and an F, and
considering I ended up coming in second place, I thought that was
strange. You could see, though, that for the most part, everyone’s
overall scores were within the same range, so I think they were pretty
accurate. As I said before, I sort of knew Juli would win. I came home
from her wedding and raved about it to my mom. It was a lot of fun.

4. What was it like attending the weddings of three complete strangers?
Were you uncomfortable at any point during the other girls’ weddings?

The four of us met briefly six days before we went to the first
wedding. Even though we didn’t know each other well, we got along
almost right away. I mean, we had something very major and very
intimate in common with each other from the beginning. Within the span
of a month and a half, we were going to be married, and sharing that
formed a real bond between us. There wasn’t a lot of discomfort at the
other weddings because a lot of what we did was dictated. We were told
when to eat and where to go. It was weird the first time we did it, but
we got used to it, and it meant that we didn’t really have time to
think about how awkward it was not to know anyone. Also, everyone at
all of the weddings knew exactly who we were, so they went out of their
way to make us feel welcome, talk to us, dance with us. While you knew
it was partially to make their friend’s wedding look the best, it never
came off as fake. I think we’re all nice girls, we all have nice,
genuine friends, and we all had a really good time wherever we went.

5. Did you get to spend time with the other girls aside from the time
spent at the weddings? Did the show give you time to get to know them?

We were not allowed to see or speak to each other outside of the show
while it was still going on. They don’t want you discussing any of the
weddings or scores with each other. In fact, even when we were together
waiting to go into a wedding or an interview, someone from the show had
to be in the room with us to make sure we didn’t discuss our opinions.
It wasn’t bad, though. That meant that we had to talk about things
other than weddings, like jobs, friends, family. I think we had a
pretty good sense of each other and got to know each other pretty well
as things progressed. There certainly never seemed to be any unease or
tension between us. One of the producers even commented that we got
along really well.

6. It seems like being on Four Weddings
could potentially cost you a lot of time and money. Did you have to
provide your own transportation to each wedding? Were you responsible
for all of the travel costs? Did you have to pay the per-person fee to
have your three competitors at your wedding?

The monetary factors
played into whether or not we would participate on the show. Obviously,
with 175 or so people already coming to our wedding, my parents weren’t
wild about the prospect of paying for three complete strangers to attend. As it turned out, the only thing I had to pay for was
my initial trip to the bride meetings. After that, the show took care
of everything. The paid for the other girls’ meals at all weddings, and
they sent cars to take us to each wedding. Thank goodness! Wedding
days averaged around 10 hours each. I’m not a big late night person, so
driving back from a wedding that was an hour away at 2 in the morning
would not have been fun!

7. Several months have passed between
your wedding and the airing of Four Weddings. Have you stayed in touch
with the girls on the show?

As soon as we finished shooting, we all
exchanged phone numbers and full names so we could be Facebook friends.
We’ve stayed in touch mostly through Facebook and text messaging.
Tarisha did call me the morning after the show aired, as well, to
discuss how ridiculous the editing was. We do want to get together
again, but there’s a wide span in terms of where we live, so it’s been
difficult. We do plan on at least meeting up in September to celebrate
the anniversary of first meeting each other, as well as our collective
wedding anniversaries. Hopefully we can find a way to see each other
again before that, though!

8. Now that you’ve seen your wedding
on TV, what advice would you give someone who wants to have her wedding
featured on a television show?

I don’t really have any advice in
terms of what you should do in your wedding. We didn’t make any changes
to what we were planning just because of the show. The biggest piece
of advice I could give then is that you have to know that major chunks
of your wedding are going to be taken out for TV. No matter how awesome
your wedding was; a show could make it look like a complete disaster,
and you have to be prepared for their spin on things.

9. If someone were to ask you if they should apply to be on Four Weddings, what would you tell them? Why?

Personally, I would tell them to go for it. I had a fabulous time with
the whole experience. Everyone that we worked with from TLC couldn’t
have been nicer or more accommodating. I love getting dressed up and
going to weddings, so obviously going to the different occasions was a
blast for me. A lot of people I know couldn’t believe that we weren’t
paid, but I know that TLC invested a lot of money in each of us – the
cars, paying for us just to be at each wedding – and I was honored to
get to see three other fabulous women start their married lives. We
were lucky that all of the girls were very sweet and that we got along
well, so we weren’t ever at each other’s throats or bored or anything
like that. I guess you run the risk of meeting girls that you clash
with when you apply. It was thrilling, though, to see ourselves on
television. That was the first time we got to see any video footage
from our wedding! I was really worried, when I got onto the show, that
if I lost, my wedding would always be tainted by that a bit, but
thankfully, by the time we taped the finale, I had been married for a
month and a half, and I had that much time for the wonderfulness of my
wedding, which really was the best day of my life, to sink in. It
wasn’t ruined at all.

Want to know more about Shauna? Check out an article written about her and husband Jon's appearance on Four Weddings, and read her articles about American Idol here.